I am so happy the winter is almost over. My affiliate sales always nosedive in the winter. I mainly promote subscription sites and also own a few subscription sites of my own. I do make it a plan every winter to take on one large project to add to my income stream. I usually will work on it from December to February and over the course of the year will use mainly free ways to promote along with seo. After I gather data from my Statcounter.com stats I will use that data to have articles written using keyword phrases I picked up from the stats and also put together a PPC campaign.
Years ago I would go all out at the beginning when a new site launched but found myself burning through my marketing budget fast and with very little results. Now I wait before I plunge into paid advertising until I gather up enough info from Statcounter so I have a path to follow that will yield decent results. If you don’t have a Statcounter.com I suggest you open one, it is free. Great stats too!
I don’t promote many tangible goods because I don’t like small commissions, most pay only 1.5% to 3% on average if you market tangible goods whereas subscriptions can pay anywhere between 20% and 50% and they are usually recurring commissions which I love. There is nothing better than earning residual income. I can spend 4 months working on a niche for a subscription service and then I get paid monthly for years from those 4 months of work. Would you work for 4 months on something if it paid you $500 or more a month for years on end? I sure do, it only takes 4 or 5 niches to pay all my living expenses, food, healthcare and food for my dog every month. What is there not to love about that?
I recommend promoting subscription sites if you want to make some long term income.